


0800-DUMP-HIM (phone a friend)

by carlemon



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bev meets Tom in highschool, Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody Hates Tom Rogan, F/M, Gen, General fuckery apropos of Derry and canon., Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Misogyny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 12:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13031586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlemon/pseuds/carlemon
Summary: Beverly Marsh has her altercation with Tom Rogan twenty-four years earlier than fated. This time, she finds some unexpected allies along the way.





	0800-DUMP-HIM (phone a friend)

It was the spring of '92, a particularly bracing one. Beverly Marsh sat upon the stairs to Derry High's science block and caressed her last Camel (sprung off Richie, who'd in turn sprung it off Paul Anderson in his history class) between her fingers, reclining comfortably in the cloud of smoke that misted 'round her, making a protective blanket against the world.

It would be her last smoke for a while yet. Tom didn't like it when she smoked, no he didn't— Tom Rogan didn't like a lot of things, but he seemed to hate especially when she smoked. _I don't like it when you smoke,_ he had told her. I _don't want you to do it around me anymore._ Soon this became, in its entirety: _I don't want you to smoke anymore, Beverly. Do you know how it tastes? Do you?_

She did. It tasted like freedom, moreso these days with him hovering over her, waiting to cart her home in his red-shiny Audi. _It's going to kill you someday, Beverly,_ he'd told her once when she'd dared to spit a spark of protest, his voice all _kind_ , slow, like he was talking to a spectacularly stupid child. _It'll rot your lungs out, keeeeeed; it'll rot you down to nothing, and who wants that, Beverly?_

 _You do, you rat bastard,_ she thought miserably, and took another drag. More and more she got the idea that he was draining the life out of her, like an asp or something suckled on her _tit_ , (like how Cleopatra'd kicked it in her english classes third period Mondays with Bill and Sally Mueller) sucking and sucking and

taking everything she had to give out of her, whether she wanted to give it or not. He was a snake affixed to her breast even though she hadn't slept with him yet, (she did not want to, but thought with a sense of certain despair that it would happen eventually, and he knew this; _god help her_ , she was so fucking tired of all of it) draining and draining and draining the life out of her, and she was standing by watching as she often watched the hockey girls' strands of blonde clot the locker room drain on days she didn't dare run home to shower. She hadn't told him this, and wouldn't ever. He'd probably get a kick out of it.

(And how was it that you got the venom out, once bit? It had to be sucked out. Sucked in with the bite, then sucked out. Sucked in, sucked out. She supposed that was what Tom was trying to tell her: that that was all she was good for. Sucked in, fucked out.)

Bev made a tired noise, and ashed her cigarette against the brick wall. The bell for first period was going and going and screaming, and Tom would be waiting for her anyhow. (For someone who claimed he was so busy he didn't do an awful lot but drift around her and breathe down her throat.)

Something would have to be done.

* * *

"I'm just saying." There was a long pause, another shot of smoke-smell. Bev itched at her bare arms where they met the grass; beside her, Eddie sneezed violently, mouthing out a _m'fuckin'allergies_ when she turned, smiling curiously, to him. "I'm just saying, we could totally take him down. There's like, seven of us, right? We could probably put him in the fucking hospital for a couple of nights."

This was from Richie. In his left hand he held another pilfered pack of Camels that he'd dangled invitingly to Bev all through Geo 'til she'd caved and taken two off him at the bell; in his right, a chipped plastic yo-yo. He pushed his glasses up his nose. "We could," he insisted, "He's not even that big. I mean, come-the-fuck- _on_."

Unsurprisingly, Bill did not defer or demur from this. He lay opposite Bev, chin in his cupped palms. He blinked very slowly, very carefully. Hurt shone in those blue blue eyes, those spring cornflower, cotton-candy-looking eyes. "Buh- _Bev_ ," was all he said. "You know wuh-we _could_ —"

And she did. But still— still she sighed into Richie's cloud of smoke, waving it from her nose, closing her eyes against the sun. _It's all you're good for_ , said Tom, sweetly, in her ear. _It's allll you're good for, Bev,_ (he called her Bevvie sometimes and surely he knew how it made her blood turn to ice, surely god _almighty) surely you know that by now?_

Something would have to be done but she desperately did not want the rest of their seven to be the ones to have to do it. It was a lucky seven, and there was nothing at all about Tom Rogan that was fortunate.

Stan sighed sedately from her lap and she grit her teeth against the striking noonday sun as Richie wriggled up to them both, trading off his pack of smokes to twine a hand into Stan's dense thicket of curls and twist. "I figured out how to make it sleep," he told her, "Wanna see? It's fucking cool-as, watchit—"

"Lord, Richie," Stan shifted uselessly in his sudden proximity to Richie's worn-down Camel and blaring laughter, his discomfort droning and mild. "Let it rest, just for ten seconds. It's a nice day and everything."

They were sixteen and vibrant. _It's all you're good for, you stupid cunt, can't you see that, Beverly, can't you see?_ She snatched Richie's pack from him, procuring for herself a cigarette, slightly bent. Richie gave her a triumphant grin that glanced and shone off his glasses' lens and sluiced away her bitter, churning mood.

"I'm watching, Richie," she told him, and turned her head into the grass as Bill snorted mirthfully by her side. 

* * *

On Wednesdays she would sometimes walk home with Ben after track. They'd make small talk and she would learn, over and over again, that he would maybe (possibly, almost certainly) be taking a crack at a place at Harvard. They'd drift and drift closer 'til she was grinning and he was grinning and they could've held hands and skipped merrily all the way down Lower Main Street, and would not look at all out of place as a couple. These days it was not so sickly dreadful— Al Marsh was home late most nights and though he was not reassured by the three inches she'd grown, the sharpened planes of her whimsical features, _(are you still my girl are you still my little girl bevvie?)_ it was easier to slip around the spaces he left.

Only once had he curled a hand into her hair and dragged her back, snapping her bobbing, terrified throat to their ceiling with the force of the movement. _(Where're you off to, Bevvie? I worry for you, I worry for you, it's all you're good for—_ ) Only once had Tom caught her waiting against the front gate for the track and field team to relinquish Ben, a loopy blissful smile blossoming across her face. It'd been at the very beginning of spring; they were to watch some new horror flick with Mike and the others, and they'd been keying themselves up for it all week. He'd acted like her joy stung him, like it threw pollen into his eyes to look at it. His nostrils had flared; he'd gone very stiff, but still, still he had addressed her in his saccharine _dumb-baby_ cadence—

 _Leave me alone, Tom,_ she'd told him, omitting the _you fucking bastard,_ the _you overgrown creep, you._ (He didn't like it when she swore either.) _Leave me alone, alright? It's just a movie._

He hadn't hit her and that was all the good for him because she would've slugged him right the fuck back, but he'd looked like he could've killed Ben _. You try it,_ she wanted to tell him. _You try it, you put a hand on him, just you try it, Tom. See what happens._

He'd let her see the damn movie, but— "You shouldn't be hanging around with that lardass," he'd told her later behind the wheel of the Audi, slowly, patiently as if he was instructing an acolyte in some arcane art. "In fact," (and she'd made 'round her seatbelt a hard fist) "—you _won't_ , Beverly. Not if you know what's good for you."

Though she had not said anything (settling for drumming her fingers furiously on the dash to the tune of whatever he had playing out his stereo that day) she'd mouthed through grit teeth where he could stick it. Something had to be done. She was going to—

They went on a date to some shitty glitzy Italian place the next night, and he would not stop commenting on the slippage of her dress strap over her sunburnt shoulder. _You're a real damn tease, you know that, Beverly? You know that? You're gonna kill me, babe, and I don't know if I like it or not._

She'd told him, at the end of the night, "Fuck off, Tom," very quietly, and though she was not sure if he'd heard it or not, it was good to spit it out. She'd later told the others this, laughing through her palm, and Richie cawed "Fuckin-a! _That's_ our Bev," like _fahkin-ay_ and _ahr Beev_ in his horrible distorted part-Babe Ruth and part-evening newscaster Voice about half a damn _century_ out from being funny as Eddie sucked joyous cracking laughter _(like jizzum,_ Tom had spat; _that's what it's like, like jizzum._ _He's a little baby-queer a flamer-baby, Beverly, babe, you have to know that—)_ out his aspirator.

* * *

Bev had never cared even a bit for what the student body thought of her, but it was startlingly obvious that they too were aware of the simple fact that Tom Rogan was a shitstain and a rat bastard, and not even Beverly fucking Marsh should have been giving him the time of day. This became strikingly evident when one lunchtime who approached her but Victor Criss, Belch Huggins and Peter Gordon flanking either side of him. He was a senior this year, was Vic; a senior with Tom and the rest of them. He should not have given two shits about giving any of the little babies —the little _shits_ he and Bowers'd loathed so darkly— trouble, not during senior year.

He was a looming slip of shadowy dark as he came up behind her and she half-expected for out of his hard mouth to twist the customary _howyadoon, ya little cunt_ , maybe even a bitter jibing  _where's the rest of your orgy, chick?_ but instead,

instead he made a broad vague gesture at Tom's physics class (in which he was held as Bev waited, not-so-patiently, outside so they could go to lunch, and so she could go to lunch with Richie and Ben and the others the next day) and said, strained, quite oddly: "You know, Marsh—"

Taken aback by this supreme lapse of character she furrowed her brow as he looked on, working his teeth across his bottom lip. She knew (because it was good to know all the shit that ran like a river out Derry's perpetually turning rumour mill) that Andy Criss had had business with her dad's side of the family _(sometimes I worry about you, Bevvie,_ out the mouth of a _fucking lunatic)_ way back, all talked-over Bradley Gang business (Criss keening _I been killed_ like she could imagine Victor himself doing whenever struck in the face at the diamond, Bruce Jagermeyer 'neath the marquee, Jimmy Gordon sitting eating sandwiches as history turned and became bloodier around him— that was probably some kind of horrible comedy, something innately _Derry)_ , but surely that could not make them all buddy-buddy all of a sudden, surely fucking not—

He seemed to get this (she'd have to ask Mike later, now, as she was no history buff and Al Marsh was no fucking storyteller) because he dropped his hand and let it card a hank of pale pale bone-white hair out of his eyes. _You know, Marsh,_ said those dead-dark eyes. _You know, it's not right— you know, Beverly. I could, we could,_

_(I could)_

_What, Victor?_ She hadn't wanted to ask but if she were perhaps more Keene-like, more Fadden or Mueller-like, she would've. Instead she averted her eyes to the shoulder of his jacket as he did his to her open-soled shoes, 'til Tom's classroom door opened and he crawled out like a roach out a drain.

_(what, victor? what could you do, what did you want to do—)_

Something had to be done.

Peter Gordon leaned at Vic's side. He was stuffing his face with a ham sandwich. He made a quip _—"Looks like she couldn't take four-eyes no more!"—_ that went unheard as Tom snaked up to her, put a hand on her shoulder. She imagined bruises blossoming underneath those heavy fingertips. She imagined—

"Who's this, Beverly?" asked Tom. Vic's features set like Jello, grim and mirthless and hard. She wanted to shake off that hand. She wanted to—

Vic pushed past them both as he left. Bev thought she might've heard a dry " _Watchit_ , Rogan," but all the air rushed out of her because as Vic made to leave, in came Henry Bowers, fresh from detention, bitterly furious.

It'd been a bad day. 

It was to become a worse day, because Henry as far as she knew was still sore (oh, the gall of her to as so much fucking dare to _exist_ around him! _Silly you, Beverly_ ) from the Rock War of '89 and especially from how he would not be graduating with Victor and Belch and the rest of his pals, —he'd been held back a year, she'd heard, with Hockstetter, and she almost let that alone elicit from her some degree of sympathy— and vengeful glee opened like a corpseflower on his face when he caught Tom's hand on her shoulder.

 _Don't,_ she mouthed, unheeded. _Christ, Bowers, Henry,_  (as if any of these things were different) _don't—_

Time passed quickly, nigh flying by, when one could already see what was to happen. And she saw Henry's leery grin and the obscene sway of his hips, Patrick coming up to giggle over his shoulder; she saw Vic's dead look and Belch's big, not-quite-knowing grin and she saw especially Henry's mouth open, only catching the end of his tirade through the cold dread that dripped along her nape. 

_("Don't worry she'll do you you just have to ask nicely—")_

Tom did not hit her but his fingers in her shoulders dug and burrowed and ripped, surely drawing blood, she thought,

_Christ, Bowers, what the hell did I ever do—_

_("—Like me.")_

In the end he dragged her away, her spat "Tom, _please,"_ choked out of her as he hurled her against the wall, hard. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Henry go a little still, seemingly not quite reassured by the chain of events he'd set into motion; she saw Peter take his sandwich from his mouth very slowly and uncertainly. 

"Ho- _lee_ shit," said Belch, unused to concern. She saw Vic's eyes darken and darken 'til they were but coal-black pinpricks, spots of ink that followed her down the hall as Tom dragged her after him. 

Something would have to be done. She was going to do something. 

 _I could,_ repeated Victor over and over again, like a broken record in her head. _IcouldIcouldwecouldwecouldMarshBeverlyplease—_

* * *

She caught Victor a day later, this time with Belch alone. As she passed him (with no new bruises, but an acute humiliation that smarted all over like a stinging nettle) they exchanged brief nods that verged on familiar. (These passed for apologies and thanks in the shared language of Beverly Marsh and Vic Criss.) She might've heard _Rogan_ again. She certainly heard Belch crow "That _fuck?"_ followed by, in rapid-fire succession: "Aw, _shit_ , she could fuckin' _kill_ him!" with a bark of laughter to boot.

As she left to find Richie (who had, at last, learnt to make it sleep without her tutelage) and the others, Gretta curved into her peripheral vision, her shoulders clicking into the space beneath Vic's arm. For a second her heart juddered about unpleasantly in her chest— _oh, hell,_ she thought, _if she thinks I'm out for her guy she'll really give it to me now, she'll make it hell for me now._ She was in no mood to play punching bag to Gretta Keene, especially not now if she'd ever been, but instead of scowling or snapping (Vic-speak was all  _fucknut, fuckface;_ Gretta-speak, _slut, bitch, little fuckin' shit!)_ or doing much of anything, Gretta watched her quietly, her brow furrowed and her arms crossed. It was markedly odd, an apothegm in a language Bev had never had to be fluent in. 

She was gone before what was lost in translation could sink in, but got the feeling she was being watched the whole time.

* * *

"Oh, _Beverly_ —" This was from Marcia. She'd cornered Bev in the locker room in between cheer practice and hockey training, and was currently too close, a shock of peroxide blonde flanked either side by Gretta and Sally. "Oh, Beverly, stop—" A manicured hand lashed out and caught Bev by the arm. It inspected, oddly gently, Al Marsh's yellowing touch from a week back. (She'd left his mug knocked over when he'd toppled it in a rage at the TV, and he'd stepped in it and browned his sock as he rose to shout for her. It hadn't hurt, not really, 'til she'd pressed her fingers into it later.)

"Let go of me," Bev told her. "Marcia, let go—" _(sit on this, dear heart; try this on this for size)_ She could do Marcia some real damage— she _knew_ this. It didn't mean she planned or even wanted to.

(What kind of rat bitch would that make her? Tom smiled, with all his teeth, against her shoulder.)

" _Beh_ -verly, you know, you can tell me anything—" And perhaps there was something genuine there but Bev was tired and the corners of her eyes prickled and burned, and there was simply too much of Marcia Fadden for anyone to handle this fine day. She truly did smell of Chanel No.5, vanilla and Chantilly creme. "Quit it, love, I'm ss- _cared_ for you, Beverly!"

"Just— fucking let go of me."  _Please._

"Oh, _Bevvie_ ," Bev slapped away Sally when she swept forward in a doe-eyed cloud of rosewater smell; her worn-down soles slid and skipped over the tiled floor but she slapped her away and left as powerfully as she could, eyes hot, heart juddering. Only Gretta watched her leave, quiet and tense and appraising as she slammed the door on Sally and Marcia's whining _oh-oh-oh-my!_ s.

* * *

She sat with Mike in the grass. Spring of '92, it was; she was not going into fucking summer like this. She was _not_. She sat with Stan in the grass. He fluttered over the stretches of freckled skin where her sunburn bled into bruising. She sat with Eddie in the grass. His mouth worked, scared and angry into his left hand. (He clutched a pill bottle of antihistamine in his right.) She sat with Ben in the grass. He held her unafraid of Henry and Tom and all the rest of them, despaired and angry in equal parts. (Hadn't he survived hell, back in '89? He had, with a jagged _H_ carved across his gut to speak for it. _Lookit Big Ben,_ hissed the track team, _lookit the damn juggernaut!)_ She sat with Bill and Richie in the grass. They bristled unresting. 

(She'd sat with Tom, once— held him too, because he'd fucking made her after the West Broadway parties from which he stumbled wrecked and drunk out of his mind. She held him as he vomited, spewing rancid slush out his scowling, saccharine mouth like the rivers of sewage that came from Derry's gossipers. She held him as he slept and mumbled "Ma, please, no," and almost heard the answering _c'mere, Tommy, I gotta give ya a whuppin', Tommy. C'mere, Tommy; 's'all y'good for, Tommy._ She'd held him because she even thought for a moment there was perhaps something there, something that would emerge out of the husk of him, something that would not shove her around as if she were fashioned out of cotton and wool, a right ragdoll.) 

It did not take long for her to figure that that'd been one shit inkling.

"It's hot as fuckin' tits," Richie was saying. He sounded like he was trying to laugh and failing.

"It's still spring," Stan was saying. He sounded very tired.

"Wuh-we could put him in the damn hossssspuh-pital," Bill was saying. He said it quietly, painfully.

"Cheapshit bastard," Mike was saying. He said it like Bill had, like he knew it was not something he was to say, like it hurt them all for him to say it.

Eddie curled safe and silent and vexed into her as Ben rested against her with cheeks scuffed raw by dry flax-grass and perhaps allergies. Something would be done. 

By christ, she was fucking sick of this. Fucking sick of Al Marsh and the terrifying litany of toneless  _Bevvies_ , sick of Bowers and of Fadden, more than anything fucking sick of Tom Rogan.

_'s all you're good for babe. Can't you see that, keeeeed? Can't you see, Beverly? That and, I know it's hot, babe, but you've gotta cover it up— I don't want that Criss kid looking at your tits, it's all you're good for, Bevvie, I don't want—_

She took Richie's yo-yo from him and spun it around her index finger. _Fuck you,_ she thought. _Fuck you, I think— fuck you, you rat bastard, you jerk. You and your Audi. Catch this._

In her head, she gave Tom Rogan the finger, beautifully.

* * *

The part of her that even gave two shits about TomTomTommy Rogan's whuppin's was well and truly dead by the time of her chemistry test the coming week, replaced by something cold and keen and purposeful. She pressed her fingers to her breast, to her heartbeat, and dug, feeling it as she swept her prac book into her bag (mercifully clean; Keene and the others, they'd left her alone ever since that strange altercation in the locker room) and raked her hair out of her eyes. She felt it as Tom strode in with a sharpened "What's taking so long, Beverly?"

Bev Marsh knew not to push it; she knew to start small. Nevertheless, it was not long before "Just homework, Tom, _okay?_ " turned into "Listen, Tom, just listen to me," turned into "I swear, Tom, if you _ever_ fucking touch me again—" Even more bracing was the swiftness with which she swung from addressing him, arms out, defensive, to sweeping bottles and beakers off the benches and flinging them at him. Potassium iodide, permanganate, dichromate, methyl orange. They all hit his face and chest and thighs with brisk-heavy noises _, whup-whup-whup,_ as if where they had hit was totally hollow, empty as the space between his eyes. That alone made her want to laugh, in an angry, triumphant way— made her want to double over and wheedle and wheeze, pull an Eddie—

"What the fuck is wrong with you, you bitch?" he bellowed. He made to bend down and retrieve one of the things she'd thrown at him (a little squeezy-bottle of lead chloride marked with a green skull, for _TOXIC)_ and she flailed out and felt her fingers curl around a graduated cylinder. It hit him just above the eyebrow, and shattered. Bruises bloomed like flowers, like springtime daisies and violets, all over him.

 _How does that feel, you prick?_ she thought. _Now, how's that fucking feel?_ She tossed her hair out of her eyes. "Tom," she started, and though it was a far cry from his sugary big-boy, _c'mere-keed_ voice, she saw him cringe furiously. "Tom, you're listening, right? I need you to listen to me. If you come near me again—"

He shrieked and lunged over one of the benches separating them, toward her; she whipped a conical flask at him and opened the bared skin of his forearm when he crossed it over his face to protect himself. "—If you ever come near me again, if you come near Bill or— or Eddie or Stan, Mike, or any of them—" her voice shook but she would be remembered as the chick who popped the cap off a bottle of something labelled _CAUSTIC_ with her teeth and hurled it at him, she would be remembered as Beverly Marsh and not as Tom Rogan's or Al Marsh's histrionic subordinated _Bevvie_ , "—if you come near Richie, Tom, if I even hear Ben's name _out of your mouth_ —" she scrubbed the heel of a palm across her raw mouth and teetered slightly before rediscovering her stance in a hand full of beakers and textbooks that, being heavy, only just glanced off of him when she flung them across the room, "—I swear, I'll hurt you, Tom. If you ever touch me again, I'll hurt you, Tom. I can swear it." She did not say _it's over, Tom_ , because there hadn't been much of anything to start with. Instead, she repeated, "I fucking _swear_ it," all shuddery, near-teary, victorious.

He snapped straight, swiping away the blood that sheeted over his forehead. "You quit it, Beverly,"

"Tom—"

"I said, you fucking quit it, you stupid cunt!" His feet slipped and struggled against the now-miasmal ooze that she'd wreaked upon him (the entire damn class sink and bookshelf plus a few acids, just for a little kick) but for a second it looked like he might make a run for her, a grab for her, and her heart stuttered in rage and in horror, _(you try it, Tom,_ is what every cell of her shrieked, however; _you try it Tom,_ as her fingertips bruised themselves on a bottle of something labelled _BIOHAZARD)_ but then the door swung open and he went, in an instant, perfectly still. A real deer in the headlights.

On the other side in sweaty glory stood Gretta Keene, a textbook under her arm. She was kitted out still in her Phys Ed gear, and held to her side, in her unoccupied arm, her hockey stick. Indecision, it seemed, boiled within her, all off her— it churned astir beneath her skin and shone sickly, darkly off her tight blonde plume of hair. It showed like gooseflesh as Bev scrubbed angry-hot tears from her cheeks. Indecision, that's what it had to be. Indecision, and fury, and venom and

something else there too that Bev found unfathomably bizarre

_(what is it gretta)_

a sort of agreement or compromise, a kind of vow or oath

(vic says _i could i could i could, marsh)_

passed from Gretta

(gretta says _solidarity)_

to her.

Tom whipped to her snarling. Bev'd always known he was a bastard, but it was becoming more and more apparent that he was a stupid bastard, total _dumbshit_ , on top of that. He hissed "Who the fuck is this bitch, Beverly?" and Gretta tossed her high ponytail about her face and dropped her textbook with an almighty slap (it fell open, Bev saw, to a picture of something exploding subtitled _CATALYSTS)_ and suddenly the hockey stick was in her hands and bowling Tom over neatly with an almighty dense thwack to the shins. Bev looked on shell-shocked (was this the Gretta who chased her into the girls' bathrooms come lunchtime in '89, the Gretta who made jacking-off motions whenever she climbed onto Silver against Bill's back in '90?) as Tom howled "You fucking bitch! You motherfucking cunt, I'll _kill_  you!" and when he made a grab for her, Gretta raised her hockey stick high above her head,

like some kind of holy sceptre, Bev would soon recount giddily to Bill in their shared English class, like something straight out of the Iliad,

and brought it crashing down with a thunderous, magnificent

_CRACK!_

Later, Bev would like to remember it as coming down on his head when most likely it struck him on the shoulder or even against the arm. But now all she did was grip her little bottle of _BIOHAZARD_ numbly as Tom teetered and crumpled in on himself. An age passed. She watched him drool the mix of blood and spittle onto Gretta's textbook, elbows juddering, turning in on themselves (like _chicken-wings,_ she thought, exhilarated) as they tried to hoist to its feet the body affixed to them. His eyes, black and verminous, blinked up at her, all over her. His snake's, asp's mouth opened and when it hissed "I swear, Beh-verl', I swear—" she 

_screamed_

(or she didn't. The sound was too throaty, too wide-mouthed to be a scream— there was too much phlegm in it, in fact. It was a roar, was what it was— she _roared)_

_(she fucking roared)_

and whipped the bottle into his back.

It shattered into a million pieces against his shoulderblades, the sound high and satisfying. Tom Rogan's eyes rolled back into his head; he groaned, and as Gretta drew forward to stand over him, he finally shut the fuck up.

Gretta flipped the wispy strands of her high pony off her forehead; she was, like Bev, panting a little. A Ked bedecked in pink rhinestones lashed out against Tom's cheek, drawing blood. She eyed the rust-smear over her toe disdainfully and hunkered down over him, wiping her hockey stick over his shirt. "What's that, you shit?" Bev gripped the whiteboard, slicking wetness (sweat, gallons of it) all over the surface. "What did you say?"

Tom Rogan said nothing. She and Gretta heaved breath, Gretta gazing at the ripped-out pages of her textbook laid asprawl. Sweat beaded all over her, decorating her upper lip. She looked at Bev, and told her: "We're not fucking picking all that up."

Beverly Marsh slid her hand off the edge of the whiteboard. She looked at Gretta, at the prone form of vile, big-boy Tom Rogan, and with her head tossed back against the board, she began to laugh.

* * *

It was bitchy Bradley Donovan who'd shrieked _girlthcheat-girlthcheat-girlthcheat_ at her feet in fifth grade who was eventually tasked with dragging Tom off to the nurse's. (Unlike Bill's stutter, Bradley's lisp had not at all improved, but there was something indeed different in his eyes when he caught her coming out of Chemistry sweating out her blue paisley dress, forearms nicked by little jags of broken glass and plastic. It was not fear. It tread, instead, the parameters of _rapture.)_ As it turned out, he and his lot were right tattletales, and word spread scary-quick.

And not just quickly. For a brilliant moment, the whuppin' of Tom Rogan was a unifying force in Derry High, making buoyant the raw sewage that fruited off the gossipers' grapevine. The hockey and cheer girls especially shot her thankful glances when she passed them in the halls— she was, as it turned out, not the only one he'd gotten his claws into.

_(It's all you're good for, Beverly.)_

_Well, Tom, the doc said I broke your jaw and Gretta your shoulder, and your face might stay fucked forever, so sit on that, why don't you?_

She lit up a cig and drank thirstily the smoke that poured, sour, into her lungs.

On the way out of the carpark she ran into Belch and Vic, squabbling over a pack of Dunhills most likely pilfered off a kid in Bev's grade or lower. Her shoulders knocked against Vic's (so insubstantial was the space they afforded her) as she passed but they scarcely spared her a second glance, and, hey, maybe she would be allowed to return home unscathed and with her good mood intact, but

Belch Huggins turned to regard her as she pushed around him, head cocked, a real thinker's face dominating his features beneath the shadow of his cap.

Eventually, he asked her: "You kill 'im?"

_(You kill him, chick? You give him the old what-for? You deal that bastard what'd been up 'n' comin' for him since forever?)_

He was grinning, leerily, brightly.

Beverly Marsh did not think herself capable of murder but when she thought of Tom Rogan's pretty little Audi and neatly-pressed polos and pristine Converse, she actually figured she might've done something worse. 

"May as well have," she eventually answered. He looked to Victor and chortled, a murky sound genuinely pleased by the sound of it by this response. 

 _"May as well have,"_ parroted Vic thinly, and he clapped a ghost-gentle palm off the side of her arm and let her leave un-knuckled and unruffled for the meagre price of one of Paul Anderson's Camels.

* * *

That Wednesday she was intercepted by the others on the way out the gate with Ben. They knitted around her an impenetrable shield, decked out in scuffed sneakers with trailing laces, wielding shitty plastic yo-yos. 

"Man, I just can't—" Mike swung his from hand to hand, describing uncertain, undefined shapes in the air. "Can someone help me—"

"S-sorry, cuh-can't help you juh- _jack_ it." And when they all looked at Bill (who had taught himself to make it walk along the air and had gasped "I fuh _-fucking got it!"_ in the middle of Eco with Stan to _everyone_ when he did, looking like a fucking little kid and a madman) and thought about it twice, the motions he was making did sort of look like that. Mike laughed in a gust.

"Are we twelve now? It's like we're twelve again," remarked Stan. "I'd probably give us shit if I passed us now. I'd probably beat us up." Nevertheless he flung his yo-yo expertly from hand to hand, slim fingers dancing around the string. It was a fine toy, wooden where theirs were plastic, painted blue and striped in garish red. Eddie Corcoran had given it to him— it seemed he and his mother were finally throwing Dorsey's things out and pawning off what they could. Its string briefly tangled into Ben's; they all sighed, dismayed, then began to laugh, horrendously out of sync.

"Hey, Bev," Richie's voice came from a little way behind her; she turned expecting his customary shit-eating grin and eyes aglow, and that she got, but he cradled in his grip an overflowing armful, a tipping armful of—

"…Are those fireworks?" asked Mike. "Are those  _M-80s?"_

Eddie interrupted Richie before he could answer. "Shit, they are. What the fuck?"

Ben frowned. His fingers drummed Bev's shoulder pleasantly. "I thought those were made illegal in the fifties. Like, you need a license and everything to carry 'em around." (" _Hell_ , Richie," sighed Stan, flipping his yo-yo over his head.)

"They were." Bill turned to him slowly, stopping their slow procession outwards. "Richie, whuh- _what—_  whuh-where did you guh-get these?"

"Off the street, man. In the gutters. Just picked 'em off some hobo, yep I did! Two-fuckin'-pence for one. Not half-bad, huh?" He laughed, then when none of them joined in, (Bev chewed her lip and grinned, which sort of counted, but not really) puffed out a heavy, aggrieved sigh. "Alright, j _eeeeeeeezus fuckin' christ._ Who fucking pissed in your cereal? I got 'em off Bowers."

_(Bowers?)_

"Bowers?" asked Bev. (It tumbled unattended from her gaping mouth, spilling over the sidewalk.)

 _"Bowers?"_ repeated Eddie, a great deal shriller.

"Bowers," affirmed Richie gleefully. He looked between them, unabashed. "And Criss. Man, that guy puts so much shit in his hair it's a fuckin' miracle he doesn't set himself on fire every time he lights one up. See, I was thinking—" A long loopy arm whipped out, drawing the route ahead of them through the air. At the end of it (and Beverly could not help but grin here) was parked the Audi, a markedly respectable distance from the Trans Am. It was no longer as shiny as it'd been when he'd taken her for Italian; a fine coat of pollen enveloped its slick scarlet edges.

There was no protest from any of them as Richie drew them all together, slapping his palms across all their shoulders. "Whaddya fucking say, guys?"

It would soon be the summer of '92. Bev took the M-80 he pressed into her palm and curled her fingers safely around it. Glee, uninhibited, unfettered, pulled taut her mouth across her face, opening a smile there like a slice of summer watermelon. "I dibs first shot."

Stan rolled his shoulders, trading his little wooden yo-yo for another M-80. He yawned, "That's fair," through the protracted chirps of the cicadas around him, and they walked as one almost skipping out of school.

**Author's Note:**

> alternate titles: tom rogan gets a whuppin, tom rogan takes on the world (and loses), beverly marsh aces chemistry. can probably be taken as a no pennywise au. features: tom rogan being a dick and getting his comeuppance for it, controlling + toxic + abusive relationships, the assumption that a 10th grade bev would even breathe in tom's direction, the love affair with the dunhill brand. 
> 
> bonus: i'll literally nvr forgive the 2017 screenwriters for destroying bev's relationships with literally everyone, destroying vic's attempt at a redemption arc as seen in the 2014 script, making gretta so goddamn angry for no reason to justify slutshaming bev, etc.


End file.
